For a seventh season, the Festival d’opéra de Québec is partnering with Jeunesses Musicales Canada to present an opera with costumes and sets, featuring young singers and piano, at the Théâtre de la Bordée. In past years, there have been abridged versions of Mozart‘s Don Giovanni and Le Nozze di Figaro and Offenbach’s La belle Hélène. This year, Francis Poulenc’s La voix humaine is in the spotlight. As the work lasts less than an hour, it was paired with a short humorous pastiche, Je chante la nuit, based mainly on excerpts from French operettas from the interwar period. The theme of the evening was love, from the excitement of a first date to the drama of a non-negotiable breakup. In all cases, the lovers communicate by telephone.

The set – a bed, a few pieces of furniture, a telephone – is designed by Vivienne Angélique, who designed last year’s La fille sans régiment for the Festival d’Opéra and Jeunesses Musicales Canada. Thomas Lussier’s inventive staging and Louise Pelletier’s musical direction allowed two singers, Olivier Bergeron and Elisabeth St-Gelais, to invest themselves fully in their characters. It should be noted that both are among the 30 under 30 Canadian musicians considered to be the most promising of their generation.

Je chante la nuit is the title of a song by Maurice Yvain (1891-1965), popularized by soprano Yvonne Printemps. It serves as a starting point and conclusion to the humorous and tender scenario imagined by musicologist and author Pascal Blanchet from operettas by André Messager, Maurice Yvain, Henri Christiné and the Cuban Moisés Simons, to which are added two songs from Maurice Ravel’s Histoires naturelles.

A man has a date in a hotel room with the woman he loves. Disappointment: she is not there, just like the peacock’s fiancée, in the humorous Ravel song! He tries to seduce her over the phone by inviting her unsuccessfully to come and dance, or to go on a trip with him. Desperate, he falls asleep, but a happy ending may still surprise him…

This pastiche operetta, alternating spoken texts and judiciously chosen arias, was brilliantly played by the young Montréal lyric baritone Olivier Bergeron, who has distinguished himself in Europe in recent years and who has participated in a recording of the complete mélodies of Reynaldo Hahn. His diction is impeccable, his voice supple and round, and his acting was convincing and full of freshness. He was well-supported by pianist Rebecca Klassen-Wiebe.

Photo Credit: Emmanuel Burriel

Elisabeth St-Gelais

Francis Poulenc’s La voix humaine, created in 1958 from Jean Cocteau’s monodrama, draws us into a whole range of emotions. The impeccable and impersonal hotel room of the first half became a messy room in which a desperate woman, who has failed to commit suicide, grapples between denial, hope, jealousy, anger and hysteria.

This depiction of her smothering loneliness, which Poulenc had written for his favourite soprano Denise Duval and whose North American premiere by Pierrette Alarie took place on Radio-Canada in 1959, received an impressive performance from Elisabeth St-Gelais. The young Innu soprano, originally from the North Shore of Québec, has rightly won awards and distinctions. She gave her character a breathtaking authenticity: going through all possible ranges of emotion and intonation, playing on silences, and exploiting a vocal palette of great intensity. Her final “Je t’aime,” whispered in an attitude of ecstasy, was really moving. At the piano, Louise Pelletier brilliantly represented the nuances of Poulenc’s rich orchestral score.

From September 19th to November 13th , this program will tour across Québec and New Brunswick with Olivier Bergeron, soprano Lucie Saint-Martin and pianist Rebecca Klassen- Wiebe.

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